This game played ftf with Wayne Baumber. This is a solid standard attacker / defender scenario where higher moraled Americans are required to hold onto more hill than their attacking, more numerous but lower moraled enemy. The reason for the lower morale on the SS being such is that they represent the 37 Grenadier Regt whom apparently had performed badly up to this point in the Normandy Campaign. For our game, the leader pick was kind to the Germans, giving them 4 out of 6 leaders with a '1' morale modifier whilst the Americans only had one '1' modifier out of 6 leaders. This kind of evened morale up some. The Americans also failed to cover one side of the hill on their initial set-up, meaning that their dug-in troops had to 'undig' themselves and miss out on oppurtunity fire on the first turn as some of them shifted position. Here's the battle report

The SS 37 Regt readied themselves for a third try. Their morale, though not as high as most SS units, would be augmented at least by some competent officers they had amongst their number. By 0600 hours the US defenders had dug themselves in on the south facing side of Hill 285. What they had not realized was that the Germans had kept men to the north face after the earlier night-attack. They had also placed a company of grenadiers and a platoon of engineers on the eastern slopes. This was an unfortunate set of events for the Americans because it meant that as the attack kicked-off, they would have to immediately start shuffling their troops about along the spacious crest.

The Germans drew first blood as the Americans lost some men to the German artillery, but by 0630 hours the Yankees had hit back as their 57’s took out a couple of PzIV’s and the GI’s managed to cut down some of the attacking infantry. By 0645 hours, the battle appeared to be totally in the balance as the Americans held onto their hill positions very well and on the east flank were actually counter-attacking the small German force on that side. However, their concentration of numbers there meant that the main force of Germans on the western side of the hill could now start to bring their numbers to bare. The German troops here edged up slowly but assuredly and finally started to bring down some awful fire on the defenders. By 0715, the Americans began to lose men in large quantity simply because there was nowhere to avoid the hail of MG and rifle fire coming in at them. Others were cut down in their dug-outs as the German grenadiers, with MG support sent in lethal close range assaults. Of course, hand-in-hand with these losses came the slow loss of ground to.

As the veritable carnage continued, OBA then rained down on a small pocket of defenders that the American Major had pulled together in a mini-redoubt. These too now took casualties and with the only prospect being utter wipe-out, the American leader surrendered the hill. Casualties had been quite high in a relatively small battle. The Germans losing 6 step equivalents (4 GREN, 1 PzIV) and the Americans taking 15 step-losses.(10 INF, 1 AT, 2 HMG, 1 ENG and MTR)

Whilst the first four turns were quite an even struggle, I think the fact that the Americans were ill-placed in error at the start finally started to count, though Wayne disgrees with this it did mean losing out on a host of first turn opp-fires and of course losing out on any dug-in benefits. The Germans, though considered lucky in Wayne's report, did well with just a '7' morale force to overcome the '8' morale defenders and such allegations of luck oft made by my main two opponents have yet to ever be reciprocated in any of my 'loss' reports. Shame on them :-)

Overall, this is a real-steady att/def battle easily playable in a sitting, and with the previous result by Matt an American victory, it is obviously one that either side can win. Good scenario.